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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Marxism & Communism
Karl Marxs CAPITAL Introductory Essay By A. D. LINDSAY Master of Balliol College, Oxford LONDON OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS AMEN HOUSE, E. G. 4 LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW LEIPZIG NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPETOWN BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS SHANGHAI HUMPHREY MILFORD PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY Impression of First edition, 1925 Printed in Great Britain PREFACE I OWE much in the preparation of this book to Mr. Beers Karl Marx, Sein Leben und Seine Lehre, and to Mr. G. W. Portuss Marx and Modern Thought, published for the Workers Educational Association in Australia. How much I have been helped in Chapters III and IV by M. Elie Halevys La Formation du Radicalisms Philosophique will be evident to all who know that great work. Though I differ widely from Mr. H. W. B. Joseph, I have been greatly helped by his demonstration in Karl Marxs Theory of Value of the indefensibility of doctrines often ascribed to Marx. But above all I wish to acknowledge my debt, for their discussion and criticism, to those to whom the lectures from which this book has been made were first delivered the Glasgow audiences meeting under the auspices of the Independent Labour Party and the Workers Educational Association and in par ticular to Mr. John McLure and to Mr. D. Kennedy of the Glasgow Independent Labour Party. My references throughout are to the English translation of Marxs Capital, but in the quotations from Marx I have in many passages made my own corrections in that translation. A. D. L. BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 9 I. Marx and Hegel 15 II. Economic Determinism . . .27 III. The Labour Theory of Value . - S3 IV. Marxs account of Surplus Value and of theCollective Labourer . . .81 V. Marx and Rousseau . . . .109 INDEX 126 INTRODUCTION THIS small book is intended, as were the lectures in which it first took form, to be an introduction to the study of Marxs Capital. It is not meant to be a substitute for such study. It is the fate of all great books tp get bcdleA-down and served up cold in text-books, which purport to tell exactly what the great book comes to, as though a mans conclusions were worth very much apart from the way in which he arrived at them. We must all have had the experience, after reading even appreciative books about great authors, of going back to the authors themselves and finding how much more there is in them than their commentators lead us to expect. Marxs Capital is obviously a book of historical importance, and any one who reads it impartially will find it greater and far more illuminating than most critics of Marx would like us, or most Marxian writers allow us to believe. There are two ways in which it is indefensible to treat a great book, ways which seem nevertheless to characterize much of what is said of Marx in this country the way of uncritical condemnation and the way. of uncritical praise. There are some books on Marx in which are collected all his inconsistencies and nothing else, as though there was nothing in Marx but inconsistencies. Such books give the impression that Marx was one of the most muddle-headed, idiots that ever lived. On the other hand, some of his interpreters seem to have given up the belief in the verbal insgiratipn of scripture for the belief in the verbal inspiration of Capital and try to maintain that there are no inconsistencies in Marx at all. 2535 61 B io Introduction Wemight surely be prepared, without having read a word of Marx, to reject both these extreme views. Mere inconsistent thinking has never made history as Capital has made it. But no man who has brought about a great revolution in thought has ever been without inconsistencies. The original thinker is too much occupied in trying to express the creative thought which is welling up in him to trouble himself about getting it all straightened out. There are always parts of his work which he has taken over as they stood from other people...
Are we doomed because of the new digital technologies used in workspaces? Can we avoid measuring in our work? Or are we trapped in a metrification dystopia? Can we create workspaces that can produce what we prefer in order to use our human effort in ways that support nature and our communities? And if yes, what technologies could we use? Here, monetary-theorist Irene Sotiropoulou explores and critiques the information and communication means that were created for capitalist profit-making, showing how we can subvert these and use them for our own non-capitalist purposes. Machines Against Measures shows that in times of capitalist restructuring and multiple social reproduction crises, there open up new possibilities to experiment with quantity, measuring, machines and digital technologies, creating new ways of production and transaction. Within these, are ways of sharing and producing that defy many principles of capitalist relations. Using everyday examples from grassroots activity, this book offers new insights into how to be inventive with what we have at hand and be able to reflect on what technologies we truly need, revealing a grounded and practical vision of technology and work, based on re-defining why and how we measure what we do.
The demise of the French Communist Party (PCF) has been a recurrent
feature of overviews of the Left in France for the past two
decades, and yet the Communists survive. This study examines the
factors that undermined the position of the PCF as the premier
party of France, but also highlights the challenges that the party
faces in a society disillusioned with politics, and the new
strategies that it is developing in order to revive its
fortunes.
With the recent revival of Karl Marx's theory, a general interest in reading Capital has also increased. But Capital - Marx's foundational nineteenth century work on political economy - is by no means considered an easily understood text. Central concepts such as abstract labor, the value form, or the fetishism of commodities, can seem opaque to us as first time readers, and the prospect of comprehending Marx's thought can be truly daunting. Until, that is, we pick up Michael Heinrich's How to Read Marx's Capital. Paragraph by paragraph, Heinrich provides extensive commentary and lucid explanations of questions and quandaries that arise when encountering Marx's original text. Suddenly, such seemingly gnarly chapters as "The Labor Process and the Valorization Process" and "Money or the Circulation of Capital" become refreshingly clear, as Heinrich explains just what we need to keep in mind when reading such a complex text. Deploying multiple appendices referring to other pertinent writings by Marx, Heinrich reveals what is relevant about Capital, and why we need to engage with it today. How to Read Marx's Capital provides an illuminating and indispensable guide to sorting through cultural detritus of a world whose political and economic systems are simultaneously imploding and exploding.
'Enlightening ... Funny, smart, original and provocative ... It is hard to imagine the stalwarts of Mock the Week recognising the Druze militia leader Walid Jumblatt in a London cinema' NEW STATESMAN 'Few standups have come close to capturing a fraction of this creative energy in a book ... Alexei Sayle is an exception' GUARDIAN "What I brought to comedy was an authentic working-class voice plus a threat of genuine violence - nobody in Monty Python looked like a hard case who'd kick your head in." In 1971, comedians on the working men's club circuit imagined that they would be free to continue telling their tired, racist, misogynistic gags forever. But their nemesis, a nineteen-year-old Marxist art student, was slowly coming to meet them... Thatcher Stole My Trousers chronicles a time when comedy and politics united in electrifying ways. Recounting the founding of the Comedy Store, the Comic Strip and the Young Ones, and Alexei's friendships with the comedians who - like him - would soon become household names, this is a unique and beguiling blend of social history and memoir. Fascinating, funny, angry and entertaining, it is a story of class and comedy, politics and love, fast cars and why it's difficult to foul a dwarf in a game of football.
Dictatorship by Degrees: Xi Jinping in China traces the totalitarian elements that linger in China's governing policies and practices, such as extra-legal Anti-Corruption Campaign, great concentration of power in one man, increasing intolerance, increasing propaganda, increasing indoctrination, increasing self-criticism inside the Party, expansion of Party cells across society, increasing censorship, cult of personality, and mass incarceration in Xinjiang. Steven P. Feldman develops a concept of pre-totalitarianism to explore these developments through extensive field data, including interviews with business executives, professors, lawyers, and non-profit executives, and observations of daily life. Feldman argues that Chinese political culture, based on the core principle of small group loyalties is inherently unstable, resulting in an ongoing tendency for leaders to concentrate power to survive and accomplish their goals. Under communist dictatorial political organization, totalitarian domination is always a temptation and risk.
Mistrusted and derided, instrumentalised and adored - the story of football in Tsarist and early Soviet Russia is as wild and intriguing as that of the country itself. In many ways it is the same story... Football in the Land of the Soviets offers a fresh perspective on a momentous chapter in modern political history. Carles Vinas shows how the Russian game was transformed in just a few decades: from a minor emigre pastime, to a modernising driver of society, to a vanguard for Soviet diplomacy and internationalism, and finally, with the first championship of the Soviet League in 1936, into a truly mass phenomenon. So exactly how did a bourgeois game end up as the collective passion of the Soviet working class? And why does it matter? Football in the Land of the Soviets brings these questions to the fore in this thrilling, unorthodox account of the fall of an imperial dynasty and the rise of the world's first socialist state.
This book deals with six trials, conducted by the Romanian state against Jewish key officials employed in state-owned import-export companies between 1950 and 1960. It begins with a presentation of the political realities of Romania following the Communist Party's rise to power, in particular those regarding its relationship with Romania's Jews and Gheorghiu-Dej's policy of National Communism. Rozenberg describes the criminal procedure used in the staged economic trials follows and then examines this procedure based on the legal system of the period, as exemplified by the six analyzed trials. The Romanoexport Jewish officials' trial is analyzed in depth, as the case study of the whole book. This book concludes by bringing to light two phenomena that dissipate some mystique surrounding the events: first, the state's practice of using its legal system as a means of oppressing the population; and second, the stereotypical image of "The Jew" which the regime in Romania developed. Despite its supposed anti-religiosity, it held on to centuries-old prejudices against Jews as pariahs, with supposed allegiance to foreign elements preferred over their surrounding society, even to the point of betraying and exploiting their own country.
Communism Unwrapped is a collection of essays that unwraps the complex world of consumption under communism in postwar Eastern Europe, featuring new work by both American and European scholars writing from variety of disciplinary perspectives. The result is a fresh look at everyday life under communism that explores the ways people shopped, ate, drank, smoked, cooked, acquired, exchanged and assessed goods. These phenomena, the editors argue, were central to the way that communism was lived and experienced in its widely varied contexts in the region. Consumption pervaded everyday life far more than most other political and social phenomena. From design, to production, to retail sales and black market exchange, Communism Unwrapped follows communist goods from producer to consumer, tracing their circuitous routes. In the communist world this journey was rife with its own meanings, shaped by the special political and social circumstances of these societies. In examining consumption behind the Iron Curtain, this volume builds on a new field of study. It brings dimension and nuance to our understanding of the communist period and a new perspective to our current analyses of consumerism.
Presented here is an overview of the recent scholarship on the sub- and counter-culture aspects of the Communist movement. The articles cover Britain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, and Finland, spanning the entire history of Communism, from the 1920s to the 1980s. Such issues as ethnic organizations, cadre formation, the Communist scouts movement, party families, and Communist fiction are explored. Themes discussed include gender, ethnicity, generation, local milieu, and the role of intellectuals.
Part of a definitive English-language edition, prepared in collaboration with the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow, the series contains all the works of Marx and Engels, whether published in their lifetimes or since. It includes their complete correspondence and newly discovered works.
This volume examines concepts of central planning, a cornerstone of political economy in Soviet-type societies. It revolves around the theory of "optimal planning" which promised a profound modernization of Stalinist-style verbal planning. Encouraged by cybernetic dreams in the 1950s and supporting the strategic goals of communist leaders in the Cold War, optimal planners offered the ruling elites a panacea for the recurrent crises of the planned economy. Simultaneously, their planning projects conveyed the pride of rational management and scientific superiority over the West. The authors trace the rise and fall of the research program in the communist era in eight countries of Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, and China, describing why the mission of optimization was doomed to fail and why the failure was nevertheless very slow. The theorists of optimal planning contributed to the rehabilitation of mathematical culture in economic research in the communist countries, and thus, to a neoclassical turn in economics all over the ex-communist world). However, because they have not rejected optimal planning as "computopia," there is a large space left behind for future generations to experiment with Big Optimal Plans anew-based, at this time, on artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Russian conservatism is making a forceful return after a century of experimenting with socialism and liberalism. Conservatism is about managing change by ensuring that modernization evolves organically by building on the past. Conservatism has a natural attraction for Russia as its thousand-year long history is largely characterized by revolutionary change - the destructive process of uprooting the past to give way to modernity. Navigating towards gradual and organic modernization has been a key struggle ever since the Mongols invaded in the early 13th century and decoupled Russia from Europe and the arteries of international trade. Russian history has consisted of avoiding revolutions that are either caused by falling behind on modernization or making great leaps forward that disrupts socio-economic and political traditions. Russian conservatives are now tasked with harmonizing the conservative ideas of the 19th century with the revolutionary changes that shaped Russia in the 20th century. The rise of Asia now provides new opportunities as it enables Russia to overcome its fixation on the West and develop a unique Russian path towards modernization that harmonizes its Eurasian geography and history.
The French Communist Party has traditionally been identified with the urban working class but paradoxically its position as France's main left-wing party was dependent upon support from the countryside. "Communism in Rural France" explores for the first time the party's complex and often misunderstood relationship with agricultural labourers.During 1936 and 1937 a bitter struggle between agricultural workers and farmers swept through parts of the French countryside. Coinciding with the urban 'social explosion' which followed the victory of the Popular Front government, the strikes, farm occupations and increased unionisation panicked farmers and shocked right-wing opinion, which blamed the spread of the 'corrupting' collectivist influences of urban society into the countryside on the French Communist Party."Communism in Rural France" traces the evolution and characteristics of the agricultural workers' movement from the turn of the 20th century through the inter-war years, as well as the response of the government and the resistance organised by farmers during 1936-37. By focussing on agricultural workers, John Bulaitis sheds light on a section of the rural population that has been generally overlooked in French rural and labour history. "Communism in Rural France" explores their relationship with the French Communist Party and illuminates an important and previously neglected aspect of European politics.
When American teacher June Mudan traveled to China in 2000 to teach at a Chinese university, her goals were simple: to experience a new culture and to help the Chinese people learn English. Over a year later, she returned to the United States with much more, including well-kept dark secrets of control, horror and death told to her by a fellow Chinese teacher. "In The Dragon's Teeth "relates these dark secrets lurking in China's past and becomes significant when grim details are revealed about the Chinese Laogai, the name for the system of labor and re-education camps throughout China. June's teacher/friend had been a political prisoner in various camps and experienced many atrocities, the sharing of which had a powerful impact on the author's perceptions of China. In America, we have become tantalized by the "Chinese Dragon" and especially its low-priced wares, but "In The Dragon's Teeth "provides the evidence that we need to become mindful of its sharp, vicious teeth and how they were used to maim and kill perhaps 50 million Chinese citizens. You have heard of the Nazi Holocaust and the Russian Gulag, now you will know about the Chinese Laogai, which needs to take its place in the annals of human atrocities.
In his farewell address, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the nation of
the perils of the military-industrial complex. But as Jonathan
Herzog shows in this insightful history, Eisenhower had spent his
presidency contributing to another, lesser known, Cold War
collaboration: the spiritual-industrial complex.
Longlisted for South Africa's 2022 Sunday Times Non-fiction Award Definitive and gripping narrative history of the Communist Party of South Africa. Renowned historian Tom Lodge has written an immensely readable and compelling sweep of history, spanning continents and the last hundred years, producing the first comprehensive account of the South African Communist Party in all its intricacies. Taking the story back to the party's pre-history in the early 20th century reveals that it was shaped by a range of socialist traditions and that their influence persisted and were decisive. The party's engagement in popular front politics after 1935 has been largely uncharted: this book supplies fresh detail. In the 1940s the author shows how the party became a key actor in the formation of black working-class politics, and hitherto unused archival materials as well as the insights from an increasingly candid genre of autobiographies make possible a much fuller picture of the secret party of 1952 to 1965. Despite its concealment and tiny numbers, its intellectual impact on black South African mainstream politics was considerable. On the exile period, the author examines the activities of the party's recruits and more informal following inside South Africa, as well as the scope and nature of its broader influence. In 1990, a year in which global politics would change fundamentally, South African communists would return to South Africa to begin the work of reconstructing their party as a legal organisation. Throughout its history, the party had been inspired and supported by the reality of existing socialism, state systems embracing half of Europe and Asia, in which the ruling group was at least notionally committed to the building of communist societies. With the fall of Eastern European regimes and the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, one key set of material foundations for the party's programmatic beliefs crumbled and its most important international alliances in the global socialist community in Eastern Europe and Russia would end. Finally, Lodge brings the story up to date, assessing the degree to which communists both inside and outside government have shaped and influenced policy in successive ANC-led administrations, particularly during the popular resistance to apartheid during the 1950s, which was underpinned by the party's systematic organisation in the localities that supplied the ANC with its strongest bases. Jacana: Africa, India
In The Conspiracy of Modern Art the Brazilian critic and art-historian Luiz Renato Martins presents a new account of modern art from David to Abstract Expressionism. The once vibrant debate on these touchstones of modernism has gone stale. Viewed from the Sao Paulo megalopolis the art of Paris and New York - embodying Revolution, Thermidor, Bonapartistm and Bourgeois 'Triumph' - once more pulsates in tragic key. Equally attentive to form and politics, Martins invites us to look again at familiar pictures. In the process, modern art appears in a new light. These essays, largely unknown to an English-speaking audience, may be the most important contribution to the account of modern painting since the important debates of the 1980s.
Maxim Gorky, born Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov in 1868 to the low stratum of Russian society, rose to prominence early in life as a writer and publicist. Gorky, who did not have a formal education, became famous in his country and abroad. Writing could not satisfy the rebellious Gorky who soon became involved in revolutionary movements. After a short period with the populist/narodnik movement, Gorky became disillusioned with the peasant class, and, instead, he chose the nascent class of workers as the vehicle for change. It is as if Gorky and capitalism arrived in Russia together. In his view the intelligentsia and the workers would bring about the change in the political, social, and cultural life of the country. Gorky came close to Lenin and the Bolsheviks, taking an active part in the Revolution of 1905 and going into an exile that lasted until 1913. Gorky, returning home on the eve of World War I and the following revolutions of February and October 1917, became involved in the momentous developments. He vehemently opposed Lenin's socialist revolution, maintaining that Russia was not ready for it. A second exile followed in 1921. After returning in 1928 to Stalin's Soviet Union, Gorky was made into an icon, with the eye of the inquisition watching over him. And here began what is often called The Tragedy of Maxim Gorky. He died in 1936, but the circumstances of his death as well as the question whither Gorky is still debated Based on hitherto unavailable primary sources, Yedlin has cut through the Gorky legend to show the real person, the Gorky of contradictions and oscillations. Fascinating reading for scholars and students of Russian history and literature as well as the general public.
Steeped in conspiracy, scandal and socialism - the disappearance of radical icon Victor Grayson is a puzzle that's never been solved. A firebrand and Labour politician who rose to prominence in the early twentieth century, Grayson was idolised by hundreds of thousands of Britons but despised by the establishment. After a tumultuous life, he walked out of his London apartment in September 1920 and was never seen again. After a century, new documents have come to light. Fragments of an unpublished autobiography, letters to his lovers (both men and women), leading political and literary figures including H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, and testimonies from members of the Labour elite such as Clement Attlee have revealed the real Victor Grayson. New research has uncovered the true events leading up to his disappearance and suggests that he was actually blackmailed by his former Party. In a time when homosexuality was illegal, and socialism an international threat to capitalism, Grayson was a clear target for those wanting to stamp out dissent. This extraordinary biography reinstates to history a man who laid the foundations for a whole generation of militant socialists in Britain.
A BBC History Magazine Best Book of the Year A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year The history the Chinese Communist Party has tried to erase: the dramatic political debates of the 1980s that could have put China on a path to greater openness. On a hike in Guangdong Province in January 1984, Deng Xiaoping was warned that his path was a steep and treacherous one. "Never turn back," the Chinese leader replied. That became a mantra as the government forged ahead with reforms in the face of heated contestation over the nation's future. For a time, everything was on the table, including democratization and China's version of socialism. But deliberation came to a sudden halt in spring 1989, with protests and purges, massacre and repression. Since then, Beijing has worked intensively to suppress the memory of this era of openness. Julian Gewirtz recovers the debates of the 1980s, tracing the Communist Party's diverse attitudes toward markets, state control, and sweeping technological change, as well as freewheeling public argument over political liberalization. The administration considered bold proposals from within the party and without, including separation between the party and the state, empowering the private sector, and establishing an independent judiciary. After Tiananmen, however, Beijing systematically erased these discussions of alternative directions. Using newly available Chinese sources, Gewirtz details how the leadership purged the key reformist politician Zhao Ziyang, quashed the student movement, recast the transformations of the 1980s as the inevitable products of consensus, and indoctrinated China and the international community in the new official narrative. Never Turn Back offers a revelatory look at how different China's rise might have been and at the foundations of strongman rule under Xi Jinping, who has intensified the policing of history to bolster his own authority.
How does the avant-garde create spaces in everyday life that subvert regimes of economic and political control? How do art, aesthetics and activism inform one another? And how do strategic spaces of creativity become the basis for new forms of production and governance? The Composition of Movements to Come reconsiders the history and the practices of the avant-garde, from the Situationists to the Art Strike, revolutionary Constructivism to Laibach and Neue Slowenische Kunst, through an autonomist Marxist framework. Moving the framework beyond an overly narrow class analysis, the book explores broader questions of the changing nature of cultural labor and forms of resistance around this labor. It examines a doubly articulated process of refusal: the refusal of separating art from daily life and the re-fusing of these antagonistic energies by capitalist production and governance. This relationship opens up a new terrain for strategic thought in relation to everyday politics, where the history of the avant-garde is no longer separated from broader questions of political economy or movement, but becomes a point around which to reorient these considerations. |
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